I'm struggling a bit taking Aurora pics but I think these came out ok. Last night was just incredible, 2 hours of amazing Aurora and loads of shooting stars too. It's quite hard to compose an image in the view finder as it's very dark and also so cold that the view finder freezes up.Anyway, hope you like them, any comments appreciated.

Very nice - must have been amazing to watch as well. The star trails are short, and there isn't much noise. What ISO and shutter speed was used?An interesting movie I saw from another year was ten or twenty shots in a time lapse sequence, which showed the aurora dancing. Looks like your skies are bright and clear enough to do that.Andy

Very nice - must have been amazing to watch as well. The star trails are short, and there isn't much noise. What ISO and shutter speed was used?An interesting movie I saw from another year was ten or twenty shots in a time lapse sequence, which showed the aurora dancing. Looks like your skies are bright and clear enough to do that.Andy[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=119405\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hi Andy.

I'm going to have a go at the time lapse thing, just working on making a usb cable long enough to have the camera outside and the laptop inside, it's way to cold for the laptop outside! The ISO was just at 100, I took 30 second exposures and to be honest there was still quite a lot of noise on most of the pictures I took. I get very little in the way of movement from the stars on 30 seconds although they do show up bright.Cheers.Mat.

I had the same issue with composing as you do. Then I figured an easy trick for my night photography: jack up the ISO to 1600 or 3200 and shoot a frame with a 1-3 second exposure - whichever gets you some outlines for compositing. This way it only takes a few seconds to compose a shot, instead of waiting the 30 secs or so at ISO 100.

An added benefit is that you get a ballpark figure on the correct exposure: 1 second exposure at ISO 3200 is equal to 32 seconds at ISO 100

I had the same issue with composing as you do. Then I figured an easy trick for my night photography: jack up the ISO to 1600 or 3200 and shoot a frame with a 1-3 second exposure - whichever gets you some outlines for compositing. This way it only takes a few seconds to compose a shot, instead of waiting the 30 secs or so at ISO 100.

An added benefit is that you get a ballpark figure on the correct exposure: 1 second exposure at ISO 3200 is equal to 32 seconds at ISO 100 [a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=119504\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thanks for the comments guys, much appreciated!Thanks for the tip feppe, hadn't thought of that, makes complete sense! I hadn't worked out the relationship between exposure time and iso either, should be easier to work out what exposure I need rather than it being a bit hit and miss as it is now.Thanks again, I'm learning loads!Mat.

Where exactly is this? Can we find it on Google Earth?[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=119554\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hi Peter.

No idea if we are on Google Earth. I'm at Halley Research Station which is on the Brunt Ice Shelf. We aren't actually on the mainland but built on a floating ice shelf that is joined to the mainland. If you had a pciture and looked at the peninsular, we are to the right of it much further south.Mat.